Category: Winter 2012

Does a natural explanation always disprove a supernatural one? It is said that for many years the Abbey National Building Society employed a full-time secretary at 221B Baker Street in London to answer mail that was addressed to Sherlock Holmes, the legendary but fictional detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle. So real did Holmes seem …

Reason #3: Science In the last two issues of the Classical Teacher, I gave several reasons why Christians should read the pagans. I talked about their contributions to architecture and discussed what they knew about virtue from the natural world which God created. These were some of the more obvious reasons. But there is another …

If book sales and public attention are any measure, atheism is enjoying a noticeable renaissance in recent years. Best-selling books by famous atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris now frequently appear on the best-seller lists, and atheist voices are louder and more emboldened  than they have ever been.  One of the arguments leveled against …

My view of how science should be taught was shaped partly by a walk in the woods I took one time with my husband Jim shortly after we were married. As we walked along, Jim would point casually to a tree or some other plant and readily name it and tell me something about it. …

Some parents and educators have the misconception that classical education is only for “smart kids.” It is not difficult to understand why someone might think this way. Latin at age 8? Herodotus by 14? With such standards, one might reason, surely classical education is only for born geniuses – the brightest and best of our …

Because of the education meltdown in the 20th century, the art of teaching Latin, and nearly everything else, has essentially been lost. As we work to restore the content of the classical curriculum, we must also strive to resurrect the art of teaching it.  Latin, as it has been taught in the second half of …

I am often asked, “What is the ‘classical approach’ to science?” There are a lot of ways to answer this question, but the most important thing is to simply point out that our approach to science ought to take account of what nature is. Unfortunately, we live in a time in which the nature of …